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JUDGE FORMALLY STRIKES DOWN NC'S 20-WEEK ABORTION BAN: A federal judge has formally issued his decision striking down North Carolina's ban on abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, except in a medical emergency. U.S. District Judge William Osteen signed his judgment dated Friday — 60 days after issuing a memorandum explaining why he declared the law unconstitutional. He wrote in March the 20-week limit prohibited some abortions before a fetus could live outside the womb. The judgment means some women could now obtain abortions later but prior to viability. Osteen wrote the 60-day delay was designed in part to give legislators time to replace the law. That hasn't occurred.https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article230814299.html

Batch underwent a mastectomy in early May after being diagnosed with breast cancer last year. She had planned to take at least three weeks off to recover, but was forced to come back to work early after she and other Democrats realized their GOP colleagues were trying to capitalize on her absence in order to pass this bill. “Moore is well aware of what’s happening with me and that I’m dealing with ongoing treatment,” she added. “I have not asked for a lot.”

Clemmons and Jackson, who is minority leader of the state House, said Batch, a working mother of two, was in pain and visibly shaking when she showed up for the last few House sessions. Clemmons has driven Batch to and from sessions since she’s still too weak to drive herself.

I hesitate to discuss the details (which I don't know), but odds are it's not just the surgery she's dealing with. There's Chemo and radiation to consider, both of which can be hell to deal with. Make no mistake, the scheduling and then postponing of this override vote is an attempt to wear her down physically, and Tim Moore should be ashamed of himself:

GOVERNOR COOPER ISSUES EXECUTIVE ORDER FOR PAID PARENTAL LEAVE: Starting Sept. 1, new mothers will get eight weeks paid leave after giving birth with full pay. Fathers and other partners will get four weeks, as will parents who adopt or take in a new foster child. The benefit kicks in after an employee has been with the state for one year. Before this, state policy required employees to take sick leave or vacation to spend time with a new child, and they could also take up to three months of unpaid leave. "During this important bonding time, our employees will no longer have to choose between their career and their child," Cooper said at a ceremony to sign the executive order. Some 56,000 state employees at state agencies under the governor will be eligible.https://www.wral.com/cooper-boosts-parental-leave-for-56-000-state-employees/18406405/

In 2015, as Black Lives Matter gained prominence as a national movement, trustees were impelled to act. Students held protests and demanded that Saunders Hall be renamed Hurston Hall in honor of the celebrated author Zora Neale Hurston, who is said to have attended classes at the university. The vote to rename the hall was not unanimous.

But after a review, the trustees conceded that university leaders in 1920 made a mistake in citing Mr. Saunders’s role as head of the K.K.K. in North Carolina as a qualification.

That last sentence is a doozie. But it also brings up an important question, that may have some bearing on how other buildings are evaluated: If the KKK had not been mentioned in that document, would they still have renamed the building? Or was that particular acknowledgment just too blatant for the Trustees to ignore? There are numerous other historical sources verifying that Saunders was at least one of the Grand Poo-Bahs of the Klan back then; hopefully that would have been enough to strike his name, because there are likely other situations where there isn't a boldly typed sentence to rely on. Here's some historical context:

NC REPUBLICAN BILL WOULD ALLOW TVS AND COMPUTERS BE DUMPED IN LANDFILLS: “This is like a bad penny that keeps turning up,” Sen. Mike Woodard, a Durham Democrat, said Wednesday. The worry about electronics in landfills is not just about the space they use, but toxic heavy metals they contain. Michael Scott, director of the Waste Management Division at the state Department of Environmental Quality, said the department would prefer changes to the current electronics recycling program rather than lifting the ban on landfill disposal. The recycling market has ups and downs, he said, but there’s still a market for materials from electronics. The state has six major recyclers, Scott said.https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article230697364.html

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